The Secret We Share
by knighted lioness
Summary: Ender's gone and he's not coming back. Not the Ender you want. They broke him and he'll never be a glorious commander again. And I won't become him for you. I can't. We'll take our secret to the grave. Together. PetraBean OR PetraPeter Read and Review!


A/N : ok ok so I know I shouldn't be writing oneshots and stuff when my poor darling tmaora pierce followers are waiting for an update on my only multichap story, but right now im kinda sick of Tammie fics, so sorry!!! Ugh. I love the ender series and bean series, they're my fave books ever, but anything I write about them trying to express exactly how much I respect all of the characters and orson scott card himself just don't turn out the way I want them to…still, please give me feedback on this one, I want to improve and someday write a fanfic worthy of orson scott card's works!!!

I did this in French class just now because I was bored…I wanted to write something about ender, my fave character, but nothing came to mind and I already did a poem for him, so then I thought about bean…this ended up being sort of interesting actually, because although it was written for bean, I struggled to keep it that way, it kept sounding like peter…so I started thinking about petra and how she was the love of the two men closest to being ender, and this turned into some sort of weirdly ambiguous fic where the narrator could be either bean or peter, so consider this petra/peter or petra/bean depending on what you prefer, or go back and read it with first one character than the other in mind…

This is set before bean discovers the secret of his birth, at the very beginning of shadow of the hegemon or the very end of ender's shadow, when he still has the ambition to be someone on earth. For peter it's after the locke proposal, when he's ensured ender is gone.

"How does it feel?" "What is it like?" "Tell me about him!" "He must have been amazing!" It's the first thing they say to me. "How inspiring it must have been to know him!" It's all they want to know. "Was he as great as the say?" The magnificent Ender Wiggin. I knew him. Him. The hero who saved us all, Ender. That's all that matters to them. I can be smarter than anyone on this planet, better than everyone else at everything but I can never be better than Ender, I will never be as great as he.

It's ok. I don't mind. I don't. I don't I don't I don't….I don't. It's just annoying…frustrating, to think that every time I need something done, it takes just a little bit longer for them to do it because they want me to convince them, inspire them, the way Ender did. Every time there's a setback it takes them just a little longer than normal to forgive me, because he wouldn't have made that mistake. He would have understood everything anywhere, they're sure. Every fault I have is one problem we wouldn't have if "Ender were here," and every success is not mine, but "just like Ender's."

It's irritating. I am one of the smartest people on the planet, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that He's. Not. Coming. Back.

Ever.

I can't be him for you. I won't. I could never be no matter what. I'm sorry…I'm so, so, so sorry… I can't bring him back. They broke him and even if he came back, it would never be as a glorious commander, ready to rule the world. He can't be the Ender you want, and I won't let you try. And I won't be him for you either.

I swear this to you though. I will make you glad it was me. I will make you glad it's me who's still here, glad that I'm the one left behind. I swear it, and even if you don't want to give me the chance I will make you acknowledge me. He's gone and the world is mine for the taking.

There are days where it seems impossible. The days when people remember anniversaries of the defeats, when they pull out the tapes of the final battle and remember the time of Mazer Rackham, and the time of fear and shudder and love Ender all the more. On those days I feel as if I will be forgotten and wiped off the face of this hard-won planet.

Those are the days I have to see her. Petra. Stone girl. Steady as everything. She's volatile and temperamental and dangerously, scarily intelligent. But most important of all is that she is steady, as steady as the aim that made her famous, gifted with the steadiness that made Ender use her until he did what no one else could do: broke her consistency. Wore her down until she just couldn't do it. But she healed, and when she was better she was steady again.

She never acts the way they do. She never compares me to him, never tells me how inferior I am next to him, how my accomplishments will never be as great as his, will serve only to glorify him more, will be passed off as possible because he'd already won for us all. She won't say it because she understands. She knows what it's like. She is one of us, the small—so damn small—group of people who saw Ender but also Andrew. Little,vulnerable, desperate, despairing Andrew Wiggin who hurt and cried and gave up. She is one of us, the people who knew the world's most terrible open secret.

She knows that Ender Wiggin was human. She knows the secret that we will all take with us to our graves. _He was human…_

And so when it becomes to much, when I can't bear it and I just want to scream the secret at all those fools out there, want to tell them how Ender cried, how Ender screamed at night, how Ender killed himself to kill everyone else, and I just want people to know that I will never be anything like Ender, I go to Petra instead.

She opens her door and we stand there and the world goes quiet. Every time it's the same. In our eyes, hers and mine, there is a question that erases all the others and makes us smile in answer. That one look says everything, and all my troubles clear away…

I forget the other things. "What would Ender do? Why aren't you as good? Were you jealous? What was he like? What was he like? What was he like?"

It fades away…because her eyes are different. She knows what Ender was like. She doesn't need to ask that. Instead she asks, "What is it like…"

The words echo in my heart, and my smile finishes the question for her.

"What is it like…"

"To be you?"


End file.
